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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22367362">Bows and ties aren't pretty where you're concerned</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequadraticformula/pseuds/thequadraticformula'>thequadraticformula</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>TWICE (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, F/M, Surreal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 11:42:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,688</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22367362</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequadraticformula/pseuds/thequadraticformula</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Loosely (or maybe heavily idk) based on 'Five Centimetres per Second'. </p><p>Sana and Momo were in love.<br/>Then Momo had to go.<br/>Sana is tied up in pretty bows and ties just for her.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hirai Momo/Kim Heechul, Hirai Momo/Minatozaki Sana</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This work is crossposted on Wattpad and Asianfanfics under the user 'thequadraticformula'.<br/>DO NOT REPOST THIS WORK.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"<em>Brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few of my favourite things.</em>"</p><p>Sana could hear the melody seeping from Momo's closed lips. Tendrils of song pouring out of her mouth and from the corners of her eyes. It looked like black blood to Sana. Or maybe poison. She smiled; her teeth stained black with the clashing of the polyharmony spilling to the floor. It was a matter of minutes it seemed before the liquid would fill the space between them and cover Sana's shoes over.</p><p>"It's been a while, Sana. Probably too long." It is just Sana that heard it, but she flinched at the sharpness of Momo's tone. She said it in a predatory manor. Sana's mind was morphing her beautiful features into a demonic image.</p><p>"Yeah it has. It's... a shame we didn't keep up with each other." Sana replied as steadily as possible.</p><p>"Do you want to hang out with us? We could catch up over tea... if you want?"</p><p>Sana couldn't even look into the face of the man that stood next to Momo. Instead she looked at their intertwined hands, her heart sinking slowly. She felt the rope around her neck squeeze a little. Coughing at the sudden air restriction, Sana tried to compose herself.</p><p>"Yeah sure. That would be awesome! I wanna hear all about Korea!"</p><p>She wondered if Momo could still understand her lies. Or maybe she had spent so long away that they had become lost in translation. Just like her little stumbles in Japanese due to her constant use of Korean.</p><p>"Oh! Let's go to that robotic sushi bar! That one... you remember?" Momo's eyes were still black and liquidly, though Sana could perceive a slight hint of excitement through the sludge. Of course, she remembered. She lived here. She went there every day. She had no choice.</p><p>"Yes! I love that place. We used to go there a lot, huh."</p><p>"Oh!" Momo's head turned up to look at the man beside her. "I totally forgot to introduce Heechul!" She smacked her palm to her forehead like she used to when she made stupid mistakes when she and Sana were younger. Some things don't change.</p><p>The man laughed nervously and shook his head slightly at Momo's antics. Sana's mind refused to process the features of his face. They still remain a blur in her mind to this day.</p><p>"Heechul, this is Minatozaki Sana, my childhood friend." The rope chokes a little tighter. Maybe today will be the day she runs out of breath. "Sana this is Kim Heechul, my fiancé!"</p><p>Sana's writs are tugged harder behind her back. The pain is almost unbearable.</p><p>
  <em>Momo didn't talk about her.</em>
</p><p>The ropes yank again, forcing her head down and her body to bend over in respect to the man whose face Sana will never remember.</p><p>"Nice to meet you!" Sana's tongue feels separate from her own body.</p><p>"Alrighty then." Momo's hands come toward Sana. "Now that we're all introduced," In them, is a rope. Another one like the black one around her neck and the red one around her wrists that force her arms behind her back.</p><p>She kneels to the floor, Heechul taking no notice and threads the rope – this one is blue – around Sana's ankles. The poison song drips onto Sana's shoes and splashes up onto her legs. It burns.</p><p>Momo ties the rope around and around, precisely and securely.</p><p>She finishes it off with a bow.</p><p>Standing up and brushing off her pants, Momo takes Heechul's hand again.</p><p>"How about we get going. It's not too far from here is it?" She scratched the back of her head sheepishly.</p><p>Sana shook her head.</p><p>"You don't remember much do you, Momoring?" Sana couldn't breathe. She couldn't move. She had yet to figure out a way out of the ropes tying her hands behind her back. How was she supposed to get rid of the one tying her feet together?</p><p>"No." The laugh that came from Momo sounded like a retch to Sana. She spluttered the poisonous melody all over her body and the floor. "Not really."</p><p>"No." Sana repeated. Momo and Heechul began to walk in a direction that Sana doesn't pay attention to. She didn't need to. They would find their way there. Sana couldn't move without falling over anyway. She would just get in their way.</p><p>"<em>Brown paper packages tied up with string...</em>"</p><p>"Not really."</p><p>"...<em>these are a few of my favourite things...</em>"</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. AUTHOR'S ANALYSIS</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Hi, it's thequadraticformula!</p><p>I know a lot of you won't be interested in my though processes behind my writing or anything because it can get kinda boring and sometimes ruin your own interpretation of a plot, but for some reason, I just felt like taking a few of my more confusing fics and explaining/justifying my choices in them in a little extra chapter.</p><p>I thought this one would be nice to start off with since it's one of my shortest fics and also one of my most bizarre. Maybe some of you got the intended meaning, and maybe you didn't. If you're a bit of an analyser like I am, you might like to read this little addition to further develop your interpretation. Anyways, let's get right to it!</p><p>Also a fair warning that this will be FAR longer than the actual fic. Whoops.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Now, some of this may be 'inacurate' in a way since I wrote this a while back in January this year, but I'll do my best to state the original meaning of the one-shot based on my feelings and intentions at the time.</p><p>I'll take a moment to explain the context of the story. This is a one-shot based on 'Five Centimetres Per Second', an anime that I watched many years ago that I didn't enjoy. I was in a bit of a rough patch emotionally at the time of writing and I think for some reason what I remembered of the plot resonated with me a little, so I was inspired.<br/>The story is about the development and unravelling of a relationship between a boy and a girl. She moves on, he does not.<br/>I have a very similar plot going on here. Sana plays the boy that doesn't move on, Momo is the girl who does.<br/>We can say that Momo and Sana had a romantic relationship for a long while before Momo moved away to Korea. We can assume they lost contact and Momo eventually found Heechul and moved on.</p><p>Okay, now we've got that sorted I'll begin with the first sentence. I start off the work with a quote from the song 'My Favourite Things' from The Sound of Music (which is the best musical btw). Originally I think I was just using it to be creepy. I was imagining a voice singing it in a tunnel or with extra reverb. <br/>In retrospect we could look at it like this:<br/>- The quote "<em>Brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few of my favourite things.</em>" is used at both the beginning and the end of the piece and could be used as a symbol for Sana's situation (will be explained later) and how it encompasses all of who she is and thus, encompasses the whole story<br/>- The fact the the song references "favourite things" instead of "favourite people" for example could insinuate that to Momo, Sana was never more than a play thing and that's why she forgot about her and everything s easily<br/>- The quote literally references sting which, in this story/representation, Sana happens to be literally tied up with.</p><p>
  <span class="u">Next we come to the first paragraph:</span>
</p><p>
  <em>Sana could hear the melody seeping from Momo's closed lips. Tendrils of song pouring out of her mouth and from the corners of her eyes. It looked like black blood to Sana. Or maybe poison. She smiled; her teeth stained black with the clashing of the polyharmony spilling to the floor. It was a matter of minutes it seemed before the liquid would fill the space between them and cover Sana's shoes over.</em>
</p><p>I've used some sort of imagery to create this sort of... horror concept. Everything about Momo's appearance to Sana is horrifying and scary and there is blood coming out of her mouth and the sound of it is clashing harmonies and it's all very overwhelming. She's stressed because all her feelings for her never left and she's upset because she can see that Momo has moved on and the whole situation is kind of eating her up from the inside out.<br/>I use the words "blood", "poison" and  "polyharmony" to engage the senses and develop that 'horrifying' atmosphere.<br/>It might be just me, but I can hear the song and I can imagine the polyharmony and it really adds to the atmosphere of the scene so I'm glad I put that there.</p><p>
  <span class="u">Paragraph 2:</span>
</p><p>
  <em>"It's been a while, Sana. Probably too long." It is just Sana that heard it, but she flinched at the sharpness of Momo's tone. She said it in a predatory manor. Sana's mind was morphing her beautiful features into a demonic image.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah it has. It's... a shame we didn't keep up with each other." Sana replied as steadily as possible.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Do you want to hang out with us? We could catch up over tea... if you want?"</em>
</p><p>The key thing here is "It is just Sana that heard it, but she flinched at the sharpness of Momo's tone." I'm not a big fan of the way I phrased it, and I should probably edit it to make everything more cohesive, but what I was trying to say was that Momo's "predatory" tone and way of speaking is simply a figment of Sana's imagination. <br/>Sana is "morphing her beautiful features into a demonic image" because really this whole situation is from hell to Sana. The love of her life has moved on, hasn't kept up with her during their years of separation and she still isn't able to move on. She is still tied down.</p><p>
  <span class="u">Which brings us to paragraph 3:</span>
</p><p>
  <em>Sana couldn't even look into the face of the man that stood next to Momo. Instead she looked at their intertwined hands, her heart sinking slowly. She felt the rope around her neck squeeze a little. Coughing at the sudden air restriction, Sana tried to compose herself.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah sure. That would be awesome! I wanna hear all about Korea!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She wondered if Momo could still understand her lies. Or maybe she had spent so long away that they had become lost in translation. Just like her little stumbles in Japanese due to her constant use of Korean.</em>
</p><p>All of a sudden we're introduced to a rope that has been wrapped around Sana's neck this whole time. Here begins my extended metaphor (or maybe just a symbol I don't think extended metaphor is the correct literary technique but it sounds fancy so too bad) for Sana's inability to move on from the relationship she had with Momo in the past.<br/>Interestingly, I've also used the world "intertwined" when referencing Homo's hands and I definitely wasn't thinking this at the time of writing, but that's a whole different level of symbolism. Momo's tied up too, but in a good way.<br/>I've also got a little reference to being 'out of practice' of a language. Momo hasn't used Japanese in a long while since she moved to Korea, and just as she has lost touch with her native language to some extent, she has lost the ability to 'read' Sana like she used to and that affects Sana greatly. </p><p>
  <span class="u">Paragraph 4:</span>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh! Let's go to that robotic sushi bar! That one... you remember?" Momo's eyes were still black and liquidly, though Sana could perceive a slight hint of excitement through the sludge. Of course, she remembered. She lived here. She went there every day. She had no choice.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yes! I love that place. We used to go there a lot, huh."</em>
</p><p>Not that much to say about this part except for the reminder that Momo struggles to remember what Sana does. Also the quote "She had no choice" could refer to her going past the sushi bar every day for work or something or simply that she has no choice but to remember because she is so ingrained in everything that relates to Momo and their past relationship and she can't get it out of her head.</p><p>
  <span class="u">Paragraph 5:</span>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh!" Momo's head turned up to look at the man beside her. "I totally forgot to introduce Heechul!" She smacked her palm to her forehead like she used to when she made stupid mistakes when she and Sana were younger. Some things don't change.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The man laughed nervously and shook his head slightly at Momo's antics. Sana's mind refused to process the features of his face. They still remain a blur in her mind to this day.</em>
</p><p>Once again, not much to say. The "when she and Sana were younger" is supposed to reference just how deeply ingrained they were in each others lives before Momo left.<br/>Sana doesn't process Heechul's face because she is in denial of everything.</p><p>
  <span class="u">Paragraph 6:</span>
</p><p>
  <em>"Heechul, this is Minatozaki Sana, my childhood friend." The rope chokes a little tighter. Maybe today will be the day she runs out of breath. "Sana this is Kim Heechul, my fiancé!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sana's writs are tugged harder behind her back. The pain is almost unbearable.</em>
</p><p>Momo didn't talk about her.</p><p>
  <em>The ropes yank again, forcing her head down and her body to bend over in respect to the man whose face Sana will never remember.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Nice to meet you!" Sana's tongue feels separate from her own body.</em>
</p><p>Another mention of the ropes, this time there are some around her wrists and this furthers the notion that Sana is held back by her memories of her and Momo together. The ropes are also depicted forcing her to bow to Heechul which indicates the control that Momo has over her life and the way she live it, even after all this time.<br/>She's also a bit like a puppet that has been abandoned by its owner: "Sana's tongue feels separate from her own body."</p><p>
  <span class="u">Paragraph 7:</span>
</p><p>
  <em>"Alrighty then." Momo's hands come toward Sana. "Now that we're all introduced," In them, is a rope. Another one like the black one around her neck and the red one around her wrists that force her arms behind her back.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She kneels to the floor, Heechul taking no notice and threads the rope – this one is blue – around Sana's ankles. The poison song drips onto Sana's shoes and splashes up onto her legs. It burns.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Momo ties the rope around and around, precisely and securely.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She finishes it off with a bow.</em>
</p><p>More ropes... the colours don't really mean/symbolise anything. This whole sequence of Momo tying ropes around Sana's ankles is all in her head. More very obvious symbolism for her being tied down. Momo physically taking the ropes to tie her legs so she can't even walk without being reminded. Without tripping over her own inability to move on.<br/>The poison is just more of that sort of symbolism. Threatening to drown her. To cover her completely until all she can think of is the love that she lost.</p><p>
  <span class="u">Paragraph 8:</span>
</p><p>
  <em>"How about we get going. It's not too far from here is it?" She scratched the back of her head sheepishly.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sana shook her head.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You don't remember much do you, Momoring?" Sana couldn't breathe. She couldn't move. She had yet to figure out a way out of the ropes tying her hands behind her back. How was she supposed to get rid of the one tying her feet together?</em>
</p><p>Mainly all you need to focus on here is Sana's inability to move or even free herself from the ropes tying her feet together. She's stuck on Momo and stuck on Momo BAD.</p><p>
  <span class="u">Lastly:</span>
</p><p>
  <em>"No." The laugh that came from Momo sounded like a retch to Sana. She spluttered the poisonous melody all over her body and the floor. "Not really."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"No." Sana repeated. Momo and Heechul began to walk in a direction that Sana doesn't pay attention to. She didn't need to. They would find their way there. Sana couldn't move without falling over anyway. She would just get in their way.</em>
</p><p>"Brown paper packages tied up with string..."</p><p>
  <em>"Not really."</em>
</p><p>"...these are a few of my favourite things..."</p><p>I honestly have become so lazy by the end of this lol. But here we have the very end of it all. Sana is tied up, unable to follow Momo and Heechul to the sushi bar. This could also be a metaphor/symbol for how she is unable to follow Momo and just move on. <br/>And of COURSE the final ending quote from the song in the beginning. Tying my little one-shot up just like Sana.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>If you read this, you are a LEGEND.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
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